May 12, 2014 - Telescope Twin Bill

Telescope Twin Bill Five years ago this week, an Ariane 5 rocket rose from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana carrying two cutting edge space telescopes for the European Space Agency. Herschel, named after English astronomer siblings Sir William and Caroline Herschel, ended operations in 2013 but was the largest, most powerful infrared telescope ever flown in space. Planck, named after German physicist Max Planck, is the first European space observatory whose main goal is the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background—the relic radiation from the Big Bang. Two instruments on Herschel worked in concert to create this infrared image of the Andromeda Galaxy. It shows cooler lanes of dust (yellow) that mark locations where new stars are being born, and the galaxy’s hotter (blue) core.